This is a participant-observer study of the history and workings of The Gestalt Institute of San Francisco, a major post-graduate therapy training institute, and of its members and trainees. The principal investigator has collected data for three years and requests financial support to write his book. He focuses on the styles and beliefs of the therapists he is studying, on the nature of the institute they have created (seeing it as a model for organizational health), and on the sociopolitical implications of human growth and institutional scale. His field is American Studies, which he describes as a convergent disciplinary field, and he means this study to be paradigmatically exemplary. He also proposes contributions to the theoretical discussion of participant observer research.